Originally Posted by rune_74
Every might and magic has been pretty casual or light rpg, which was part of it's charm.

Yes, in the old times I remember there was a debate about if the might&magic series are light RPGs or not. Some part of the charm comes from the fact that M&M series (especially M&M 3 (1991) and later) games were easy to learn, hard to master. Even if you look at the interface of M&M 3 it was way ahead of its time with accessibility. Although there was a need to read manuals once (which was very fun) to learn skills, game world, etc, games' mechanisms were much easier to learn if you compare it to the other RPGs of their time.

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
I know I should probably just go and play some of the old ones, but my backlog is gigantic as it is already. So would someone humour me and summarize in a few words what sets the M&M series apart? What do you love / remember most about it?

Every M&M game was built on open world, free roaming structure. So biggest charm comes from that. In a time where other games (apart from few exceptions like Ultima) confined the player on a strict path, M&Ms allowed them to roam freely. Also in M&M 1 you didn't have a clue about the main story, you had to find that on your own.

Actually M&M series were light on dialogue, but heavy on combat, exploration. So we may think of them like Skyrim of old. But also apart from modern RPGs, M&M series relied heavy upon puzzle solving, which made every dungeon fun. In order to reach some areas you had to learn some skills like swimming or mountaning. This was part of the puzzle solving. Also there were no level scaling in any of them. You could go anywhere you want, but even near areas were insanely difficult for level 1 player. But, M&Ms were pretty generous when it comes to leveling. You could easily reach 100th levels at the end of the games.

In 1998 with M&M 6, series increased its fun base a lot. It was released approximately one year after Daggerfall and people who were bored with Daggerfall, rushed to M&M 6.

— "Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."
Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man